In
developing countries, urbanisation results in the formation of slums; neighbourhoods which are characterised by environmental degradation, lack of
provision of water-sanitation, lack of access to affordable energy and dilapidated
housing stock. Within this setting there is evidence to demonstrate that
communal facilities such as public toilets, if not well sited and designed, could potentially act as crime generators, especially for gender based violent
crimes such as assault and rape. The absence of lighting, among other factors,
such as inadequate provision of basic sanitation and lack of police presence in
slums, has been highlighted as facilitators for violence against women in slums
in third world countries (Lennon 2011; Amnesty International 2010).

This research project proposes to test the hypothesis that provision of
adequate lighting around public toilets in slums will reduce womens perception
of insecurity and fear of crime.

How can
large complex cities such as London develop sustainable food systems? The UNs
designation of 2012 as International Year of Co-operatives stimulated interest
in co-operatives as a way of responding to this major challenge of the 21st
century. However, while they are often cited as a means of bridging the divide
between consumers and producers, research on co-operatives has itself been
divided across different disciplines. Agricultural, consumer and worker
co-operatives have generated quite distinct bodies of research. Seeking novel
ways to integrate these disparate traditions this pilot project will map the
current landscape of food co-operatives in London as a significant starting point
to understand the role and potential of food co-operatives in feeding the
twenty-first century city.

Artist Hilary Powell reclaims the base metals of roofing zinc and copper piping from demolition sites and scrap yards in order to create etchings that both depict and re-imagine the post industrial landscapes from which they emerge. Through imaginative salvage the work explores regeneration and economic transition through putting the physical remnants of industrial decline to artistic use. In the project creative production and the poetry and politics of place combine with the science, agency and political ecology of materials.

Emerging from intensive on site research and production this new collaborative project unpacks the material components of the demolition site (ZINC, COPPER, STEEL, CONCRETE, LONDON BRICK STOCK, ASBESTOS, LIME MORTAR, CEMENT, LEAD, SLATE…..) It follows the life cycles and journeys of these seemingly banal by-products of regeneration and examines what these assorted materials illuminate through their passage through and rupture with human systems of use and value. The story of each material, its place in the demolition site and onward journey will be told through:

A series of workshop events focused on each specific material exploring its properties, histories and associations with diverse experts from anthropology, chemistry, archaeology, science and technology studies and the arts.

A publication containing a series of stories made in collaboration with the materials themselves and an exhibition of these works

The decisions made by householders during minor construction
works on their home will, in part, determine domestic energy consumption
through the coming decades. With 87% of the existing housing stock likely to
still be in use in 2050, sustainable cities of the future will require high
energy-efficiency in homes already built. Owner-occupiers remain critical
gate-keepers. In terms of householder response to policy initiatives aimed at
energy efficiency, evidence suggests that cost and disruption are amongst the primary
reasons for rejection of change. Yet when householders undertake construction
work on their home, a financial commitment and an expectation of disruption are
already taken for granted. Minor works might therefore be a point at which barriers
to more sustainable change may be lowered. The proposed project will examine minor
construction works as an important ‘point of change’ with significant potential
for the enhancement of the energy-efficiency of existing building stock.

Our study will provide a detailed appreciation of the
discussions between householder and architect at the start of a minor works
project (extension, loft conversion, conservatory replacement or extensive
refurbishment) to examine if and how issues of sustainability are broached,
considered, accepted or rejected. This will be done through a novel
ethnographic approach, focussed on observation of interpersonal dynamics in two
critical meetings: the initial brief and the first presentation of designs. Through
a detailed analysis of the resulting fieldnotes and interview transcripts, we
will generate a nuanced appreciation of how the assumptions and interactions
that characterise such minor works currently lead to more or less sustainable
homes and how architects could encourage owner-occupiers to choose more
sustainable homes. By exploring ways in which today’s householders could be encouraged
to make their properties more sustainable, we are working towards more
comfortable and healthier homes for the next generation of occupants.

There is
considerable evidence (Titheridge et al, 2014) that those on low incomes living
in deprived neighbourhoods, are more adversely affected by the impacts of
transport than those living in more affluent neighbourhoods. These differences
include an increased risk of road traffic injury, increased concerns about
personal security, and higher exposure rates to ozone and particulate matter.
People without cars, those with disabilities, the elderly and school children
are the most severely affected by severance (where transport schemes or traffic
act as a barrier to mobility and social interaction). This combination of
problems can reduce access to key services such as employment, education and
healthcare, lead to social isolation and reduce physical and mental well-being.

However,
current methods used to appraise and evaluate transport schemes are based on
aggregate measures of the ratio of total benefits to total costs.
Distributional impacts, if considered at all, are typically assessed using
qualitative methods and are thus likely to be given less weight in
decision-making process than total benefits given the current dominance of
quantitative methods within the field of transport planning.

This
project aims to assess the extent to which distributional impacts are
considered in appraisal and evaluation of major transport policies, programmes
and projects and critically assess the evidence that transport projects lead to
distributional impacts.

Project: This project seeks to explore the potential of
visual mapping methodologies (video and social media) to understand the impact
of the London 2012 Olympics on open spaces in the city. The project therefore
seeks to capture the ‘moment in time’ nature that the event provides to explore
the specific questions ‘Whose Olympics? And whose London in 2012?'

The contentious use and ownership of open spaces in London
is receiving increasing attention in the public eye. Since 2008 the Justice in
the Green project has explored mapping techniques on the fringes of the Olympic
site, revealing certain disconnects between legacy planners’ intentions and the
aspirations of local residents and users of open spaces. Attention given to the
Games has not focused explicitly on the changing importance of urban open
spaces in enabling greater inclusion in the Olympic experience.

The project will operate through an online platform hosted
by the established MyStreetFilms portal created by UCL Anthropology in
association with Open City London. Our proposed platform, ‘MyOlympics’, will
use this existing network to call for contributions from members of the public
to visually map how open spaces in London are being transformed by the Olympics
and related events, and how individuals are specifically experiencing these
spaces during and immediately after the Games as the legacy begins to take
shape. The anticipation in the build-up to the Olympics and the ‘feel good
factor’ generated during the event ensures a high level of public and media
interest. What happens in the period immediately after the event offers fertile
grounds for continued research.

Project: Our project will create a network of scholars in
Europe and North America working on ruin, obsolescence, waste and demolition in
modern cities. UCL Grand Challenges funding will support two focused
interdisciplinary workshops and site visits designed to establish research
connections and develop international dialogues. A website will accompany the
workshops and a published collection of papers will disseminate this research
to a wide public and generate international frameworks for future
collaborations.

We begin with the premise that sustainable cities must
contemplate their pasts as well as their futures. While researching the
ephemeral aspects of cities might seem antithetical to an analysis of the
sustainable city, we argue that the broken and the ruined, the ephemeral and
the short-lived, the torn-down and the wasted, are crucial to policy as well as
practices of sustainability. Ephemeral Cities will provide a historical and
contextual investigation of buildings, objects, images and spaces that either
fell by the wayside or were never meant to last. Investigating how ephemerality
came to stand for the experience of urban life, we will ask how lessons from
the past might help us meet the challenge presented by our own discarded
objects in the cities of the future.

Project: This project aims to understand the processes
shaping the possibilities for community voices to contribute to long-term strategic
planning for sustainable urban development. It will consider how democratic
modes of governance shape long-term strategic planning and city visioning in
two different contexts, London and Johannesburg, through a systematic
comparison of the recently published Revised London Plan (2011) and
Johannesburg’s Growth and Development Strategy 2040 (2011) to explore:

the democratic and participatory processes through which the
strategies were produced. Do these reflect wider international definitions of a
‘good governance’ agenda and meet expectations of democratic urban governance?

the extent to which the strategies reflect the interests of
local stakeholders (including neighbourhood, community-based organisations and
advocacy groups) and, specifically, whether the contents of the plans reflect
local residents’ concerns for sustainable development, especially in
post-financial crisis contexts.

The project will be among the first systematic academic
interrogations of the revised London Plan, meeting UCL’s wider mission to
‘contribute to the vibrancy and development of London as a world-leading city’
and its commitment to supporting community inputs to making sustainable cities.
It will pilot an initiative to develop comparative methods and interpretive
frameworks in urban governance appropriate for an international approach to
urban studies.

Project: Globally, reclaimed water is increasingly supplied
for various uses due to aggravating water shortages caused by growing urban
communities and climate change, more stringent wastewater effluent standards,
and the expanding availability of high-performing and cost-effective water
reclamation technologies. In the United Kingdom, however, there has not been a
consistent and considerable pattern of urban water-reuse because historically
there has been a sufficient supply of water. With highly increasing water
demand in the South-East and more droughts due to climatic change, there is
growing public and political consensus to establish water-reuse networks as
part of a sustainable cities agenda. At present, the projects within the UK
have focused on building and development-scale water re-use. However, greater
opportunities exist, at a larger scale, with urban water reuse networks, to
rebalance water use and demand, tap into unconventional water resources and
improve the economic and environmental performance of urban water supply
systems.

This project serves as a pilot study to investigate the
feasibility, costs, and benefits of developing water reuse networks in urban
areas with a particular emphasis on London. The aim of this pilot study is to
develop a multi-university EPSRC research network and proposal by July 2012.

Project: Our proposed workshop responds to the peculiar
silence about sanitation systems in relation to sustainability. Discussions
around sustainable cities focus on issues like farming, recycling, and water
conservation, all of which intersect with sanitation and resource recovery, but
rarely address them. New Loos for London? holds that sanitation must be part of
any meaningful strategy for sustainable cities.

Our project aims to explore the viability of dry sanitation
in London. In an age of water, energy and fertilizer scarcity, dry sanitation
requires fewer resources to transport and treat waste than waterborne systems
and offers improved nutrient recovery. A two-day invited workshop brings
together key figures from bodies that deal with waste and sewers, entrepreneurs
and designers developing alternative systems, cultural commentators, and
interested members of the community. It will allow a focused exchange of
information and views about the main technological, social, logistical and
political implications of such schemes.

New Loos for London? develops on Tse-Hui Teh’s PhD research
about London which found that some environmentally aware citizens were already
using “yellow mellow” toilet flushing techniques to conserve water. This
project aims to build on their informal efforts by considering how to implement
dry sanitation systems at a community level.

Project: The project is to design an entirely new building
type called the ‘Learning Room’, which is being conceived in this first
instance as helping with reconstruction in the Gaza Strip. It is conceived as a
prototype for a series of annexes to existing schools that can be applied in
many countries if the prototype proves successful.

There are two key aims for the Learning Room: firstly, to
provide a community centre where residents can meet together to discuss urban
regeneration plans; secondly, to act as a knowledge base for innovative forms
of sustainable construction that can help with rebuilding in conditions of
chronic lack of building materials, energy, water etc. We are also currently
writing a self-build manual to help Gazans create low-energy dwellings when
rehousing, and the Learning Room will thus act as the location where this
knowledge can be disseminated. Families rebuilding their houses will be able to
study different forms of construction and low-cost passive energy-saving
devices. It will act as a ‘community laboratory’ in some of the poorest and
toughest places on earth.

A test site has been identified for a prototype Learning
Room in a school in the Zaytouna neighbourhood of Gaza City, with that project
being funded by UN-Habitat with support from the Palestinian Housing Council,
Gaza University, Islamic Relief and other bodies.

Agri-food systems in London exemplify unsustainability. This
project aimed to conduct a pilot study into the current landscape of food and
agriculture in London, and to use university-community engagement to build
dynamic knowledge.

The
project involved a large number of UCL staff and students, including the Food
Junctions network (33
departments at UCL and 25 community groups). Multi-disciplinary
expertise was provided by members of UCL with an interest in food and
agriculture, including those involved in public health, medicine, anthropology,
geography, archaeology, soil science, environment, public policy and economy.

Around 300 guests attended The Food Junctions Cookbook launch
party, held in the North Cloisters at UCL on the 27th October 2011.

Multi-sited ethnographical investigations produced a
research report with a comprehensive, but critical, analysis of the current
landscape of food and agriculture in London.

The Food Junctions Cookbook: Living Recipes for Social
Innovation is the result of a unique collaboration between UCL staff and
students and London’s local communities. It explores the complex relationships
between food, human society and nature. It mixes practice, politics and
pleasure and ties people together through a common interest in food.

Algae has the potential to become a renewable source of
biomass. This project investigated the feasibility of integrating algal
production with common urban waste streams, such as carbon dioxide from exhaust
gases and nutrients from wastewater.

Two working prototype PBRs (photobioreactors) have been
built, a 10 litre and a 60 litre model. The larger photobioreactor, a
development based on the original prototype, has been placed in the Darwin
Building’s green house.Algal
production can be integrated with many common waste streams, including diesel
exhaust emissions, and wastewaters, providing environmental benefits to both
air and water quality.

Biomass
productivities within the reactor are high, but require considerable energy
input. Work is ongoing to optimise the process and reduce costs.

The major aims of the one-day
festival and the exhibitions were to present specialist research material from
many disciplines, and to do so in vibrant, accessible, and sustainable ways, suitable
to a broad audience.

Inspired by the spirit of the oympics, the event allowed
individuals from around the world to share their explorations of the city with
an unusually broad audience (almost 500 people – academic and non-academic –
from across the UK, Europe, and the US pre-registered for the day, and an extra
100 attended on the day).

The event and the exhibitions juxtaposed and interconnected
research from The Bartlett, Birkbeck, Central St Martins; the Slade; CASA (UCL
Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis), UCL Centre for Digital Humanities, UCL
Department of English, UCL City Centre, UCL Urban Laboratory, UCL Department of
Geography and UCL School of Slavonic and East European Studies.

The event identified areas of shared interest and was
the starting point for a number of collaborative partnerships: with the charity
First Story, the Man Booker Prize, UCL English Department’s City Centre, and
UCL’s Urban Laboratory.

The inaugural Open City: Documentary Festival was held from the 16th–19th June 2011, and Open City: Architecture was one part of it. Open City Docs represented a systematic collaboration between Anthropology and the Bartlett.

This festival, and the MyStreet website, are research and a form of
public engagement. They are a way to alter the University’s relationship
with its urban environment. This form of engagement, where research is
collaboratively produced by ‘the public’ and a university employee,
provides a model to be adopted elsewhere – e.g. in a new UCL site
outside of central London. Our staff now work for think tanks, others
are taking the model abroad.

There have been packed screening of the 12 best films at Open City Docs Fest, bringing new audiences into UCL. The best of 2012 films were screened on BBC Community Channel. There was an Arup Phase Two exhibition of 20 films May-October 2012.

Through the annual competition and UCL screenings this work is creating new conversations about the urban environment. MyStreet is a living on-line archive of everyday life, available for anyone who is interested in exploring urban life in London.Novel Insights

Open City

Open City Docs Fest is an annual live festival devoted to exploring the world we live in through the vision of documentary film. The festival was well received by the public and those at UCL, and t has become a regular fixture in the UCL calendar.

MyStreetFilms

The My Street website uses amateur documentaries inspired by
Mass Observation. Ten minute long, postcode linked, allow people to
tell the stories of their places.The work of 200 filmmakers has been inspired by the project.

This project aims to develop a new approach to managing complexity and value conflicts in planning, through a critical engagement between the values of the stakeholders, normative reasoning about the ethics of health promotion, and the constraints afforded by present circumstances.

Planning for health raises important questions about power and
justice – questions which neither planning theory nor political
philosophy in their current incarnations are well equipped to answer.
This project establishes a dialogue between the two disciplines. The project will bring together several academic disciplines relevant to sustainable cities. It engages philosophers, ethicists and others interested in making public policy about how to manage value conflicts in a legitimate way under real world conditions

Workshop outputs will be published as in a journal special edition, and a website and blog will be developed at www.thejustcity.org.

The aim of this project was to run a small workshop where invited speakers
would discuss the absent role of ‘The City’ (in a spatial sense) from popular
analyses of urban poverty.

Although poverty is an inherently spatial concept, the way in which the space
of the city is represented in analyses of urban poverty is surprisingly uni-dimensional, focusing almost exclusively on the physical distribution of
poverty. Consequently, the aim of the workshop was to explore how
approaching the ‘spaces of poverty’ from multiple perspectives could
contribute towards more effective and just poverty reduction policies.

By bringing together scholars from different disciplines (e.g. geographers,
planners, economists), as well as development policy experts (e.g. from the
International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED), the UK
Department for International Development (DFID) and the World Bank), the
workshop facilitated wide discussion regarding the role of urban space in the
theory and practice of urban poverty.

Urban poverty is a key challenge for Sustainable Cities, especially as those
cities with the fastest growing urbanisation rates are frequently also those
with the highest rates of urban poverty.

“The City in Urban Poverty” edited by Charlotte Lemanski and Colin Marx, will be published in 2015 by Palgrave-Macmillan.

Tsunami behaviour in the deep waters of the open ocean is well understood. This is not the case in near shore waters. The aim of this workshop was to improve understanding of the behaviour of tsunamis in near shore waters, and to improve models of coastal city inundation.

Dr Guillas organised the Workshop ‘Tsunamis in Port Cities from Generation to Impact’, held at UCL in August 2011, which brought together differing approaches and models of tsunami behaviour.

Following the workshop Dr Guillas became Co-investigator, in charge of the work package on the quantification of uncertainties in numerical models, for a 4-year, £2m NERC national consortium grant, awarded in 2012. The workshop contributed to framing the application.

GCSC Publications

2013

Regeneration Realities

Regeneration Realities is the second in the Urban Pamphleteer Series (following Future and Smart Cities). The series, from the UCL Urban Laboratory, draws on the history of radical pamphleteering to stimulate debate and instigate change.

Future & Smart Cities

Future and Smart Cities is the first in the Urban Pamphleteer Series. The series, from the UCL Urban Laboratory, draws on the history of radical pamphleteering to stimulate debate and instigate change. It features some of the best thinkers on urban issues, including Muki Haklay, Sarah Bell, Alan Penn, Christoph Lindner, John Bingham-Hall, Brian Dixon, Laura Vaughan, Mike Crang & Stephen Graham, Regner Ramos, Susan Collins, Yvonne Rogers, Licia Capra & Johannes Schöning, and Antoine Picon.

The London 2062 book features new work that
addresses London’s future, including academic writing, opinion pieces
and illustrations. The book also features the winning entries from the London 2062 competition, which invited contributions from UCL students.

UCL Grand Challenge of Sustainable Cities Healthy Cities Commission

Abstract from GCSC Healthy Cities Commission report

With almost thirty years experience from the Healthy Cities movement, we are increasingly aware of the features that transform a city into a healthy one. What is less well understood is how to deliver the potential health benefits and how to ensure that they reach all citizens in urban contexts across the world. This is an increasingly important task given that the majority of the world’s population already live in cities and that, with current high rates of urbanisation; many millions more will soon do so. We provide an analysis of how health outcomes are part of the complexity of urban processes, arguing against the assumption that urban health outcomes will improve with economic growth and demographic change. Instead, we highlight the role that urban planning can and should play in delivering health improvements through reshaping the urban fabric of our cities. We consider this through case studies of sanitation and wastewater management, urban mobility, building standards, the urban heat island effect and urban agriculture. We follow this with a discussion of the implications of a complexity approach for planning of urban environments, emphasising project-based experimentation and evaluation leading to self-reflection and dialogue.

Key Messages

Cities are complex systems, so that health outcomes are emergent properties

The urban advantage in health outcomes has to be actively promoted and maintained

Inequalities in health outcomes should be recognised at the urban scale

A linear or cyclical planning approach is insufficient in conditions of complexity

Urban planning for health needs to emphasise experimentation through projects

Evaluation leading to dialogue between stakeholders and self-reflection is essential

This is an abstract of a report submitted in February 2012 for publication in The Lancet.

The Food Junctions Cookbook ties people together through a common interest in food, and represents a genuine
collaboration between UCL, London’s local
communities and beyond.

The Food Junctions Cookbook is more than a recipe book, it includes things to cook, but mixes in practice, politics and pleasure. Some 70
contributors share their ‘living recipes’ for things to eat, things to
think about and above all things to do. Get yourself ready to try some
of these living recipes: how to taste wine, open up a catering co-op,
deal with food waste, prevent children obesity, make delicious dishes
from wild plants and grow food in the city.

This Cookbook is another step on a collective journey that began with
Food Junctions in 2010, which explored the significance of
food, culminating in a festival that celebrated food in and as
community, and shared new ways of thinking about what we produce and
consume.

GCSC Events

2013

Imagining the Future City: London 2062

A book based on the London 2062 work, edited by Sarah Bell and James Paskins, will be published in November 2013. You are cordially join the discussion about London's future on Monday the 18th
of November as we launch Imagining the Future City: London 2062.

Programme:

6pm, 18th NovemberG04 Chadwick Building, UCL

UCL’s Grand Challenges—Prof. David Price, UCL Vice-Provost (Research)

Imagining the Future City—Dr Sarah Bell, Co-editor

Future of London—Jennifer Johnson, Programme and Research Lead-Future of London

Governing London in 2062: The City of Any Dreams?–Prof. Mike Raco, Chair of Urban and Regional Governance, Bartlett School of Planning

Gazing into the Crystal Football–Dr George Myerson, Visiting Senior Research Fellow in the Centre for Life Writing Research, King’s College London & Prof. Yvonne Rydin, Chair of Planning Environment and Public Policy, The Bartlett School of Planning

Sustainable Resources for Sustainable Cities

from GCSC & Institute for Sustainable Resources

9.00 5th November to 12.00 6th November 2013

Location:
UCL

Cities or, more broadly, urban areas - densely packed, complex, built systems - are home to over half the of world’s population. With this trend of increasing urbanisation worldwide, urban sustainability has been identified as a key area of societal relevance, an area in which a solid research base can inform policy and practice.

The Grand Challenge of Sustainable Cities (GCSC) exists to initiate and support cross-disciplinary research into urban sustainability. Sustainability in the urban context is inextricably linked to resource flows. Among the minimum requirements for a city’s population are housing, food, safe water, waste disposal, and energy for heating and cooling.

Cities must draw on global resource networks to provide the raw materials to build new infrastructure, maintain current systems and retrofit existing buildings. Cities also generally rely on a ‘hinterland’ to supply the energy, food, water and other resources they require. Sustainable cities rely on the sustainable provision and use of resources, and this reliance provides a clear link between GCSC and the work of the Institute for Sustainable Resources.

The symposium specifically looked to address the challenges around provision of resources for growing urban populations, with regard to the physical built environment, infrastructure, transport and water. It aimed to address the question of how cities can continue to meet their present needs without compromising the future of the city, the region or the planet.

Outputs

In addition to the symposium itself, a number of activities were funded to further research into sustainable cities across UCL. Details of these activities and outputs fro the symposium can be found below:

Provide a centrally located transport hub to coordinate transport-related research across UCL’s ten faculties

Develop a new web portal which will act as a platform to create collaborative research bids

Create a community of interest by developing a public engagement programme of seven seminars themed on research related to the values of transport entitled ‘Mind the gap’—translating research into practice

Use EPSRC Impact Acceleration funding to disseminate and promote the policy relevance of our research for practitioners, public and policy makers via briefing notes and published papers to be made available via the UCLTI web portal

Develop a new MSc in Transport, Health and Policy

Develop income generating CPD and consultancy activities

Hold a number of interdisciplinary research bid ‘sandpits’ based on key challenges

Launch of Urban Pamphleteer

6.30 pm Friday, 26th April

Join Ben Campkin, Rebecca Ross and Guglielmo Rossi for the launch of Urban Pamphleteer issue #1, ‘Future & Smart Cities’.
Each illustrated pamphlet in this series collates and presents expert
voices, across disciplines, professions, and community groups, around
one pressing contemporary urban challenge. The intention is to confront
key contemporary urban questions from diverse perspectives, in a direct
and accessible tone, drawing on the history of radical pamphleteering.

Small Grants Showcase and Reception

28th – 30th January 2013

The Grand Challenges held a showcase in the South Cloisters between the
28th and the 30th of January 2013. The event featured posters from the
interdisciplinary collaborations that have been made possible with Small
Grants funding.

Tuesday 15th January 2013

2012

Executive Suite, Front Engineering Building, University College London

19 March 2012

London’s demand for energy resources comes from three
primary activities: heating buildings, transport and electricity. London
has always imported most of its energy as coal, gas, oil and
electricity. Renewing London’s energy infrastructure will be vital for
maintaining our position as a ‘world city’ over the next 50 years as the
centres of global economic activity shift eastwards. This event brought
together sector specialists to debate the technological and policy
challenges facing practitioners in the coming years to ensure that
London has a forward looking energy strategy, that is resilient to major
global shifts.
Chair: Andy Deacon, Head of Local Delivery, Energy Saving Trust

The future continued growth of London will expose sharper
housing differentials in the decades ahead. In 2031, London’s population
is expected to be 10.1 million inhabitants which implies a need for
about 1.6 million new houses and 1.5 million replacement houses. Numbers
and space requirements are but two of the issues here; there will also
be new demands and pressures caused by accessibility and the liveability
of individual places. This event will bring together leading academics
and practitioners to debate how we overcome the immediate financial and
delivery challenges facing the housing sector to meet these larger long
term challenges for London.

London’s position as a centre of global trade and finance
is at once a source of resilience and vulnerability. London’s economy
has shown itself to be diverse enough to absorb major shocks so far, but
the future of the financial sector is highly significant to the future
of London. The future of London’s finance sector depends on the recovery
of the global economy and the development of the Asian economies, which
may increasingly attract financial as well as manufacturing industries.
Past investments in infrastructure and human capital provide a strong
foundation for maintaining a position of global strength, though by no
means secure it. This event will explore the key actions that need to be
undertaken to maintain, grow and diversify London’s economic strength
in the years ahead.

Richard Di Cani, Director of Transport Strategy and Planning, Transport for London

Ian Lindsay, Director of Land and Property, Crossrail Ltdg

Alongside increases in population size and economic
activity, demand has risen for all modes of transport across London.
Congestion currently occurs on the radial routes into the city, on the
orbital routes around the city, and at key points where long distance
and short distance commuting traffic intersect in outer London. Air
traffic and the use of London’s five airports have also increased. In
2003, the Department for Transport reported that air traffic had
increased six fold between 1970 and 2002, to some 200 million passengers
per annum. By 2020, the figures are projected to double again. This
event will explore the range of potential, modal, technological, and
policy responses to these trends to ensure that London develops a
sustainable transport system in the years ahead.

6.30–9.00pm 11 September 2012

UCL Cruciform Lecture Theatre 1

Extra pressure on London's transport systems during the Olympics is forcing both the public and private sectors to try innovative ways to spread demand and use the road and rail networks more efficiently, from new delivery patterns to greater use of the web and twitter. This event will look at some of the successful innovations which ensured that the goods were delivered and that people got around during the Olympics, and that can be built upon to improve ways in which transport is delivered in London in the future.

6.30-9.00pm 13 September 2012

UCL Cruciform Lecture Theatre 1

What will London be like 50 years after the Olympics? The London 2062 project has
asked UCL academics, students and partners from other organisations to
look at the challenges and opportunities that lie ahead. This event is
the public culmination of a series of workshops and symposia addressing
different aspects of the future of London (organised by Dr Sarah Bell @sarahjaynebell and Prof. Mark Tewdwr-Jones @profmarktj).

13-14 September 2012

(Dis)Comforts of Homewas
a two-day symposium held at UCL that explored how comparative cultural
perspectives on the concepts of ‘home’ and ‘comfort’ can help us
understand, learn from, and influence the behaviour that drives domestic
energy consumption.

Contributors to the symposium included:

The School of European Languages

Culture and Society

The School of Slavonic and East European Studies (SSEES)

Geography

Anthropology

Science and Technology Studies

The UCL Energy Institute

UrbanLab

The London Consortium

As well as paper presentations there will be two documentary screenings with panel discussions.

GCSC Related Outcomes

2013

"Ben Campkin’s thoughtful and timely book is a welcome addition to the current debate about regeneration"

In Remaking London Ben Campkin provides a lucid and stimulating historical account of urban regeneration, exploring how decline and renewal have been imagined and realised at different scales. Focusing on present-day regeneration areas that have been key to the capital's modern identity, Campkin explores how these places have been stigmatised through identification with material degradation and spatial and social disorder.

Remaking London from Ben Campkin has been very well received, prompting positive reviews from Anna Minton (author of Ground Control), the Guardian's Dave Hill.

2012

A major new report published by Atkins in a unique partnership with the UK Department for International Development (DFID) and UCL Development Planning Unit (DPU) argues that Future Proofing Cities is about utilising and developing the capacities of cities to respond to the risks associated with climate change, resource scarcities and damage to ecosystems in away that catalyses inclusive urban development.

Adriana Allen, Vanesa Castan Broto, Caren Levy and Linda Westman from the DPU, were responsible for providing strategic guidance throughout the development of the project’s analytical framework and for the production of five in-depth case studies that provide a nuanced exploration of the combined challenges and opportunities for future proofing urban development in Bangkok, Maputo, Bangalore, Karachi and Nairobi.

THE HEURISTICS OF MAPPING URBAN ENVIRONMENTAL CHANGE is a platform initiated in February 2012 by the DPU (Development Planning Unit). Through a heuristic process which involves an international network of researchers, activists, and organisations, the platform aims to apprehend how place-making practices by ordinary citizens reinforce, resist or transform the production or reproduction of injustices in cities.

2011

Urban Constellations edited by Prof. Matthew Gandy (UCL, Geography) is an essay collection brings together a range of cutting-edge international scholarship on cities, urbanization and urban culture.
For more information and to purchase the book please visit the Jovis website.

For more information and to purchase the book please visit the Jovis website.

Urban Reflections: Narratives of Place, Planning and Change by Prof Mark Tewdwr-Jones (UCL Bartlett:Planning) looks at how places change, the role of planners in bringing about urban change, and the public's attitudes to that change.